Salvation Army

History

At first sight, a history of the Salvation Army appears well documented. There are formal accounts of the movement's early days, including the SA champions’ biographies, manifestos, or theological debates—William Booth's 1890 book In Darkest England and the Way Out is one example. Both the development of the SA's recycling services and the management and organization of SA trading in secondhand goods globally are, however, much more nebulous. Systematic archival work has often been undertaken only sporadically, and the hard-to-capture, invisible nature of secondhand and nonmonetary exchanges and transactions are frequently unrecorded in the archives. This lack of formal historical and current documentation presents researchers with challenges, but it also points to gaps and alternatives (such as anecdotal evidence) in the sources used to construct the understanding of the SA and its role in social history.

The Salvation Army was founded in 1865 by Booth, an English lay preacher and former pawnbroker. Inspired by the teachings of John Wesley, the movement quickly spread worldwide. Its core philosophy underscored the moral value of a productive life and human agency to generate self and social transformation: no one was considered useless, and everyone was capable of enacting their own salvation with hard work and discipline. The role of the SA was to actively assist salvation, extending a helping hand to the “undesirables” of society. These philosophies were applied in the establishment of innovative social welfare services. Of particular importance is the historical, industrial model of recycling pioneered by the SA in the 1880s as a creative solution to both material and human waste. The Prison Gate Brigade program offered food and shelter to recently released prisoners in exchange for paper-recycling work. Moral discourses about the values of labor and participation converged around ideas of socially worthy production and consumption of commodities, linking thrift, consumption, human, and social care. The SA soon began “jumble sales,” providing used clothing, and later household items, to the poor, collected by Salvage Departments—predecessors of the popular contemporary charity (thrift, opportunity, or “op”) shops. The legacy of the SA's founding values have stretched into its social services in the 21st century, which include assistance for the homeless, migrants, refugees, and vulnerable youth.

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